paperCrude oil futures rose above $70 on the back of interest rate cuts in the U.S. and China as well as a weaker dollar, Bloomberg reports. Shell posted a 22% gain in third-quarter profit and said itsCFO will take the top job next year, both in the WSJ (sub reqd.). But tough economic conditions also forced Shell to delay expansion of its Canadian tar sands project, Bloomberg reports.

Peak oil will come sooner than expected and is a bigger threat to the U.K. than terrorism, an industry group concludes, in The Guardian. Big Oil is certainly having trouble tapping big new fields. Chevron has spent seven years and $3 billion on a Brazilian field that will supply three days’ worth of global oil consumption, the WSJ reports (sub reqd.). But that’s about all Western majors can get these days: “”If you’re only going after elephants, you’ll never hunt,” says a top Chevron executive.

As gasoline prices fall, are American drivers returning to their old habits? Gasoline demand is still down from a year ago—but not as much in recent weeks, reports the NYT. Volatile energy prices are a headache forsavvy companies burned by hedging, so what are poor consumers supposed to do this winter? in the WaPo.

Sen. Barack Obama’s half-hour informercial reiterated that energy would be a top priority in his administration, in the WaPo. Make that energy independence, with a special emphasis on reducing demand, Grist notes.

The credit crunch and big losses could force T. Boone Pickens to delay construction of the world’s biggest wind farm, in Earth2Tech. China’s GreenGen project is now the world’s biggest clean coal demonstration facility, notes Scientific American, but the project faces a looming coal shortage in China and concerns about cost.

Eastern Europe is jumping on the nuclear power bandwagon, both as a way to cut emissions and also to diversify energy supplies away from Russian natural gas, in the IHT. The U.K.’s Royal Society is seriously looking at geo-engineering solutions to battle climate change, The Guardian reports.

Finally, check your cows–methane emissions are on the rise suddenly, and scientists don’t know why, in Reuters.

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